How long does Alfa-Bank and the Moscow Credit Bank have to live?

With the advent of Elvira Nabiullina in 2013, the Central Bank began to clean up the banking sector. Since then, 358 banks have lost their licenses. But the regulator has only picked up to large banks this year.

In July, the Central Bank revoked the license from Yugra Bank - this became the largest insured event in the history of the Russian banking sector: the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) paid out Yugra 172.1 billion rubles to depositors of Ugra. Before banks of this size ("Yugra" was the 31st largest asset), the Central Bank of licenses did not deprive.

At the same time, the Fund for the Consolidation of the Banking Sector started to work - the Central Bank created it in order to self-manage the recovery of banks - without the participation of DIA and private investors. In the old mechanism of sanation, there were too many shortcomings, explains Roman Prabkin, an analyst at S & P. Investors could not add a sanitized bank due to a capital deficit, which complicated the process, and the opportunity to not comply with the regulations created the temptation to use the soft loans granted for sanitation for their own purposes rather than for improving patients, and transfer bad assets to the bank's balance sheet. In addition, the drop in market rates required more and more funds to be allocated to the improvement of banks: holes were looted at the expense of profits received from the difference between the preferential rate of DIA and the market rate.

The regulator proceeded almost immediately. At the end of August, he took to the rehabilitation of FC Opening. A few weeks later Binbank went to the consolidation fund. The same fate in December was suffered by Promsvyazbank.

All of them were among the largest private banks in the country. FC Opening was the seventh in terms of assets (hereinafter data on Interfax-CEA as of June 30), Promsvyazbank closed the top ten, Binbank was the 12th and, although it was not on the list of systemically important banks, was de facto it . In fact, there are only two non-state banks in the top ten: Alfa-Bank and Moscow Credit Bank, which received unprecedented support from Rosneft.

All three - FC Opening, Binbank and Promsvyazbank - in fact, summed up one thing (although the time of their entry into the fund was determined primarily by liquidity): distressed assets that grew over the years, and a shortage of capital.

By sanation of three large banks, the solution of the accumulated problems of the sector is clearly not over, the head of the bank ratings group ACRA Cyril Lukashuk is sure. The key problems of the banking sector remain poor quality of assets and insufficient reserves, he points out: banks have been approached to solve these problems, but it is still impossible to say that the trend is broken. In the market there are players with an unstable financial situation, these are banks of various sizes - it is obvious that the sector's recovery will continue, says Lukashuk.

Revocation of licenses from banks will continue for another 2-3 years, Nabiullina said this week: "The recovery policy will continue," she promised. "After that, we would like to turn to the situation when the cases of recall and reorganization will be merely isolated, exceptional" (TASS quotation).

How will the banks survive 2018-2019, will depend on the economic situation, although the Central Bank will obviously continue to address the problems of unsustainable players, Lukashuk argues: the state and private business need to capitalize banks - the need for capital remains.

How justified the arrival of the state in the person of the Central Bank in the banking sector is difficult to say, says former first deputy chairman of the Central Bank and ex-chairman of the board of directors of Binbank Oleg Vyugin, because of the two economic crises, private banks have lost greatly to the state, as a result - bankruptcies of small and medium-sized banks, and then the forced sanitation of large players. But in the market there are 30-50 more banks, where too a tense situation: "What will happen to them, we will soon see. But in the short term, the state from the banking sector will not go away exactly. "